Blackland TX · The towns and places

Rural Shade

Navarro County, Texas

Hugh and Washington Ingram settled here in 1850, and Hugh's son James built the first steam gristmill in this part of the county about 1870. By 1885 there were four cotton gins and three gristmills for seventy-five people; after the Second World War the school went to Kerens and the stores closed.

The Texas Freedom Colonies Project counts Rural Shade among the eleven freedom colonies of Navarro County, the communities freedpeople built after emancipation. Field Note 008, The forks of the creek →

Also within two miles. Burying grounds: Rural Shade Cemetery.

Among the places · On the map

From Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas.